THURSDAY—TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
Do you think it’s okay if they’re sort of on-purpose ugly?” Elise asked, tilting her head as she contemplated the straw hat she was holding on her lap as she wove strands of lavender through its loose weave.
“It was the best I could do out here in the boondocks,” said Gia, who was standing behind Elise and miming strangling her.
Jane stifled a laugh.
“I think it’s great!” Wendy chirped. “Sun hats for the guests! So thoughtful! And if they look a little handmade, well, they go with all the Mason jars everywhere, right?”
“Because we could take the other route and have a big bucket of dollar store sunglasses for everyone,” Elise said. “Maybe that’s what we should have done. Because then the guys could wear them, too. I don’t really see any men wearing the lavender straw hats.”
Jane sighed. Elise had decided yesterday, during their lavender field inspection, that they needed to offer the guests some sun protection. So she’d sent Gia to the nearest town, and the maid of honor had come back with fifty cheap straw hats she’d scored at some kind of craft wholesaler she’d tracked down. And now everyone was trying to poke lavender strands through them.
“I’m concerned that people might not get that these hats are ironic,” Elise said.
“Oh, but think how cute they’ll be in the photo booth!” said Gia, clapping her hands with false enthusiasm. “You already have all those funny props for that, so these will fit right in. We can take them over there right after the ceremony.”
“You’re right,” said Elise, brightening. “We’ll use the hats for the photo booth, and we’ll get sunglasses for everyone for the ceremony. Like, cute, funny ones. An assortment they can choose from when they go to sit down.”
Still behind Elise, Gia closed her eyes and turned her head heavenward as if appealing for divine patience.
“Maybe…” said Wendy, drawing everyone’s attention. “Maybe you can get, like, a really, really big Mason jar, and you can put the sunglasses in that.”
Gia burst out laughing but covered it with a cough. Jane bit down hard on the insides of her cheeks. Elise furrowed her brow, confused. Then she patted Wendy’s hand and said, “Great idea, sweetie,” in a way that conveyed that the idea was, in fact, the opposite of great.
“Okay, can one of you run back to town and see if you can find a dollar store or a Walmart or something and clean them out of sunglasses?”
“On it!” Gia chirped. “Let me grab some quick lunch inside, and then I’ll head out.” As she turned to go, a group of the guys appeared from the direction of the fields, where they’d been sent by Elise earlier to harvest lavender for the hats. Cameron was not among them.
Kent was, though.
Jane braced herself as Kent set a basket of lavender at her feet. What was wrong with her? Who didn’t want a nice, reliable guy to set a basket of fragrant herbs at her feet?
“You need some help, Jane?”
“Nope, I’m fine!” she said. “I think Elise has changed her mind about the hats anyway.”
Undeterred, he plopped down beside her under the tree. He looked so incongruous, with his khaki shorts and his short-sleeved plaid button-down shirt. She herself was wearing yoga pants and a tank top, having very much taken to heart Elise’s instruction that they could dress casually in the days they would spend at the site before the wedding. What did Kent see in her? Compared to him, she was a slob.
But he definitely saw something, because he was manipulating the strands of lavender, tying one end to the other, almost like he was making…oh, no.
“I made you a crown.”
“Oh…wow.” She pasted a smile on her face and ordered herself to stay still while he coroneted her.
“Oh, that is cute…” Elise trailed off in the way she did when she was getting thoughtful, which Jane knew could only spell doom.
Great. Now she was going to have to hand-weave several hundred lavender crowns in the next two days and fend off Kent.
Kent who was kind of…fixing her hair? What was happening? He had finished placing the crown, but he was sort of tucking loose strands of her hair behind her ears now, which was really—
Then there was the sound of someone clearing his throat.
Not even that, really, more of an indistinct growly sound.
She knew that growl.
“Ah, Cameron, my man,” said Kent, who had, at least, stopped touching her hair. “We wondered what had happened to you.”
Cameron looked awful. Like he was hung over, maybe? It was possible. She had gone to bed early, so she had no idea what the guys had gotten up to last night. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles, and he was sweating something awful.
And goddamn him, even in this diminished state, he lit her up like a sky full of fireworks. It wasn’t fair.
He blinked rapidly several times and heaved a big, shaky inhale. Was he going to barf right here? His eyes darted toward the B&B. She followed his gaze. All the other guys were clustered around the entrance, talking to Gia, who apparently hadn’t left for Operation: A Thousand Sunglasses yet.
Then Cameron’s eyes darted around in all the other directions, like he was trying to plot an escape, which, as evidenced by the fact that he spun on his heel without a word and made for the wooded area opposite the lavender fields, he clearly was.
“What the hell is his problem?” said Elise. Wendy’s observation from last night, that Cameron was being weirdly antisocial, even for him, had become common currency. Jane had tried to avoid the conversations about him, because, frankly, it hurt like hell that she was the reason he was being so violently antisocial. What did it say about her that he couldn’t even compartmentalize enough to make small talk in her presence for five minutes?
“You know what? I’ve had enough of him,” said Elise. “I’m going after him, and I’m going to find out what is up his butt. He can’t be allowed to ruin my wedding.”
“I’ll go,” said Jane, hopping up as Kent attempted to place a lavender bracelet on her wrist. Elise could not find out that she’d slept with Cameron, that she was the reason he was being so impossible. And anyway, he did need a talking to, and keeping Cameron in line was what she’d signed up for, right? She smiled wanly at Elise, saying, “After all, he’s my job.”
* * *
The ground was cool against his cheek. The ground was hard beneath his body. As his lungs heaved, they expanded with each inhale against the ground he was hugging like he was taking cover in an enemy attack.
The ground is cool. The ground is hard.
These were real, physical facts. Find something to anchor yourself to the present, the shrink had said. He’d been headed for the stream that ran through these woods. It was hardly the waterfall that had been prescribed, but the gently rushing water had calmed him last night, and it had reminded him a little of Niagara Falls. Of standing next to the rushing falls while Jane kissed him.
Too bad she wasn’t here now. He had a feeling a kiss would work pretty well as an anchor. It was hard to freak the fuck out when you had a lush, curvy woman pressing herself against you, when you had Jane, with her snappy comebacks and her gentle questions, deigning to press her lips against yours. When you had—
“Cameron?”
That voice. Though it was soft, it was a lance, cutting immediately through the panic, arresting it in its tracks. It was a quick, blessed injection of air when he’d been drowning. Enough air, enough energy, that he could roll over so he was on his back, to check if it was really her and not the product of his fucked-up mind. Because wouldn’t that be the cruelest thing? Being haunted by the shit he had seen was something he could accept. It made a certain sort of macabre sense. But if the universe decided to start sending him visions of Jane that turned out to be mirages? He wasn’t sure he could survive that.
He reached out a shaking hand to brush her ankle, to check that she was real.
She didn’t say anything, just towered over him with the sun backlighting her lavender-adorned hair so that it became a curtain of flame, letting him clutch her ankle like some kind of animal. Goddess Mode: Woodland Edition.
She lowered herself to the dirt next to him, and said, “What’s wrong?”
He wanted to tell her not to sit there. It was the perfect fucking metaphor for them. He was literally wallowing in the dirt, battling the demons that plagued him, and she was lowering herself to sit next to him, concern written all over her beautiful, open face. She was wearing stretchy, light gray pants that hugged her gorgeous curves and a tank top with tiny straps, leaving her arms and much of her chest bare. If she sat here with him, she was going to get dirty.
If she sat here with him, she was going to get hurt.
He wanted to tell her all that. To save her.
But he couldn’t talk. No words would come. He could breathe again, now that she was here, but speech wasn’t attainable yet. It was impossible to force the sentiments his mind was shouting through his closed throat.
So she sat, damning herself.
Because he grabbed her. Once more than her ankle was within his grasp, he scrambled to a seated position and reached for her.
She wrapped her arms around him, and the minute they closed around him, he started shaking like a fucking baby bird tipped out of its nest. His whole body was racked with shudders, in fact. She held him, stroked the back of his head while he quaked.
But he was still breathing. He could still breathe.
And he could feel.
She was kneeling across from him and, as they sat facing each other and she held him, only their upper bodies touched. It wasn’t enough, suddenly. He needed to feel more of her. His body had finally tuned into something besides its own panic, its own sense of imminent danger, and it was such a goddamned fucking relief.
He let his hands slide down her back and settle on the globes of her ass. He squeezed, and she whimpered a little.
“Get over here,” he rasped, his heart rejoicing that he’d managed to produce words to accurately represent the thoughts inside his head. “Please.”
She obeyed, scrambling to straddle his lap, settling herself so snugly against his growing arousal that he gasped. He’d only meant that he needed to touch more of her, for more of her body to be in contact with more of his, but now that she was here, he wasn’t giving up an inch. He kept his hands on her ass and thrust his hips up, shamelessly grinding his cock against her. He could feel her heat through the thin fabric of her pants.
“Oh,” she moaned. “Cameron.”
“Yes,” he said, not precisely sure what he was agreeing to, maybe just the sound of her speaking his name in pleasure. God, he had missed her. It had only been two days since they’d woken up together at Jay’s, but it was like a lifetime had elapsed, entire battles waged, since he’d had his hands on her, where they belonged.
He slid his hands up inside her tank top. She was wearing some kind of stretchy sports bra, so he kept sliding them up under that, too, grabbing handfuls of flesh and squeezing, kneading.
“Oh my God,” she said, letting her head fall back, which exposed her throat to him.
He licked it, and she yelped, lifted herself off him a little despite his protests, and started trying to shove her pants down. “I need you,” she pleaded, and the sound of it nearly made him come in his pants. “I need you inside me right now.”
“We don’t have any condoms,” he said against her neck as he nuzzled it. The noise of protest she made was nearly his undoing. “Don’t worry, baby, I can still make you feel good.”
“Please,” she said, “please.”
He took over where she’d left off, moving her pants down enough that he could get his hand in there.
“Oh, fuck, you’re so wet.” Just like last time. Just like every time. Her responsiveness made him crazy.
“I need you,” she said again, whimpering.
“I know. Shhh.” He breached her with a finger, arranging his hand so his thumb was free to press against her clit. Normally, he would have liked to take more time to tease her, but she was so ready. And though they were in the woods, they weren’t very far from the main buildings.
Making a hooking motion with the index finger inside her, he searched for the telltale spot. None of her vibrators had had a g-spot stimulator, and he wanted to fucking rock her world. His finger brushed over something different from its surroundings, something slightly spongy. There it was. Watching her like a hawk, he pressed down gently, experimentally.
Her eyes flew open, and she shattered in his arms.
He wanted to pump his fists in victory. Because he’d made her feel good, but also because it had felt like something only he could do for her. Which was ridiculous, objectively not true. But all the same, he held stubbornly to the notion.
It took her a few minutes to come down, for her panting to return to normal. He held her, as she’d done for him earlier, waiting for her to solidify, to come back to herself.
When she did, she was embarrassed. Her cheeks pinked, and she had trouble meeting his eyes. He pressed a finger under her chin and tilted it up. “Thank you,” he said.
“Thank you?” she echoed, incredulous. “I haven’t done anything yet.” She glanced meaningfully down at the bulge in his jeans.
“I’m fine,” he said, and, miraculously, he was. He was back, fully in his body, fully in the present. It was he who should be thanking her. She had brought him back. And as much as he would love for her to return the favor, anyone could stumble by and discover them. It was time to get her—literally—out of the dirt. So he tried to gently dislodge her from his lap, but she held tight.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can’t be that selfless. Tell me what you want.”
She was still wearing the lavender crown. So instead he reached over, grabbed it, threw it on the ground, and said, “What I want is for you not to hook up with Kent.”
She surprised him by laughing. The musical sound washed over him like a benediction. Then she tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, and said, “What happened here?”
He looked around exaggeratedly, trying to make her laugh. “I finger-fucked you in the woods?”
She shook her head like that was the wrong answer. “It’s the PTSD, isn’t it? You were having some kind of flashback when I first got here.”
Shame washed over him. He didn’t want her to know how weak he was, how much he’d needed her just then. But how could he hide it? He’d been shivering in her arms. And after what she’d done for him, he owed her the truth.
“This is about what happened with Eric and Haseeb, isn’t it?” she said gently.
He shook his head. “No. This is about what happened with Becky.”
* * *
“It wasn’t the same at all,” Cameron said, pressing his hands into his temples. “So I don’t know why it’s all happening again.”
He was clearly frustrated with himself, angry even. Jane wanted to take him in her arms and tell him everything was going to be okay, but she couldn’t. Whatever else had or still would happen between Cameron and her, they didn’t lie to each other. “Tell me,” she said, scrambling off his lap and pulling up her pants, which, in almost any other circumstance she would have found comical. “What happened that wasn’t the same? Who is Becky?”
“Master Corporal Rebecca Mannerly. Becky was my best friend in Iraq…I guess.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You guess?”
That drew the smile she’d been going for. “Well, you know. I’m not very likable.”
She shrugged. Maybe that was true for other people, but she liked him. As evidenced by the spectacular orgasm he’d just given her. Which was a problem. But now was not the time to argue the point or to embark on an analysis of what the hell kind of whammy Cameron MacKinnon had put on her. So she waited.
The silence between them stretched on. He lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe some sweat from his face and took a deep breath.
“It’s hard being a woman in the military.”
“I can imagine,” she said.
“Guys can be jerks, you know?”
“You think?” She was teasing him—she hoped not too much. She wanted him to keep talking, and she suspected the best way to do that was to treat him like she always did. If she was overly solicitous, or if she did what she really wanted to, which was, astonishingly and against her better judgment, to wrestle him to the ground and wrap her lips around his dick, he would clam up.
“Yeah, so Becky was one of us.” He absently picked blades of grass as he spoke. “Any of the guys would have taken a bullet for her, I think. Well, most of them would have. But she also wasn’t really one of us, you know? She put up with so much shit. Like, every day. I sort of…made friends with her.”
“You stuck up for her, is what you mean.” Cameron shrugged, but Jane could imagine it very well. The lone woman in a group of male soldiers. It couldn’t have been easy. And despite the bad-boy image that Cam projected, and seemed to believe in so fervently himself, he had a definite white knight thing going on.
“Our captain was a real dick. And it makes such a difference in terms of the culture of the unit. My first tour, my captain was a real stand-up guy. He was why I went back for a second tour. It sounds cliché, but he was a role model. He’s part of why I thought I might…” He broke off, shaking his head. A corner of his lip curled up, as if he were about to sneer at some unseen enemy she was pretty sure was himself.
“Thought you might what?” she asked gently.
The sneer arrived full force. “I was looking into going to university. You can’t be an officer without a degree.”
“I think that’s great,” she said. She meant it. It made sense. He was smart. And equally as important, he was kind. He would be a great leader.
“A moment of temporary insanity,” he said dismissively. “Anyway, that part is beside the point. This captain of ours—Biggs was his name—was a grade-A prick. A real power tripper, you know? One of those guys who got off on being in charge. He was always barking out ridiculous orders just for the sake of it, making us run laps at noon in the sun because he felt like it, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds like a real charmer.”
“Yeah, well, so at some point he started hitting on Becky.”
She could picture it. Unfortunately she, like probably all women alive, knew the type. “Gross.”
“It was his latest little exercise in dominance, you know? She wasn’t interested, but he kept pushing.”
“Oh!” Jane exclaimed as the pieces fell together in her mind. “The trial.” Oh God, Cameron had gotten himself kicked out of the army over this.
Cameron started throwing the grass that he’d pulled up into the stream. “I thought it was low-level stuff. She and I talked about it sometimes. She said she could handle it. She was used to it, unfortunately. I kept telling her to document it all and encouraged her to go up the chain of command, but she always refused. She didn’t want to be a shit-disturber or a test case or any of that. She begged me not to make a big deal of it. She just wanted to put her head down and be a soldier. That was the ironic thing: she was the best soldier in the bunch. I sometimes wonder if that’s why Biggs picked on her.”
“Like he was threatened, you mean?”
“He shouldn’t have been. Becky and I were only non-commissioned members—that’s army-speak for grunts—but yeah. I guess I can sort of see why. She was going places. But shouldn’t that have reflected well on him, as her commanding officer?”
“So what happened?” Jane asked, even though she was afraid she knew the answer.
He turned to look at her, his eyes glittering with rage. “What happened is that I walked into her tent and found him attacking her, and I lost my mind.”
“And you were charged and tried,” Jane said, her stomach swirling.
“Pretty much. I’m lucky I wasn’t court-martialed, I guess.”
“But there were some really big extenuating circumstances!” she protested. It didn’t seem fair that he had to throw everything away—and not only his career, but the whole university thing, too.
“Irrelevant. I was quite clearly in violation of the code of service. And Biggs was tried separately.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was demoted to lieutenant.”
“So you can attack a woman and get a slap on the wrist, but you defend the same woman and they kick you out?”
He sighed. “It’s complicated. I was a reservist, and just a driver. I was a lot more expendable than a career officer in the regular force. Also…”
He made a frustrated noise and looked up at the sky. There was clearly more to the story.
“Also what?” she prompted.
He kept his head tilted back and spoke on an exhale, as if he were trying to exorcise the sentiments he was voicing. “Also I didn’t stop.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t stop?”
“I got him off her, but then…I kept hitting him. I broke his jaw. It was like all the months of accumulated bullshit she’d taken from him—that we’d all taken from him—ignited inside me somehow.” He scrubbed his hand against his own stubbly jaw. “There were witnesses—our scuffle drew the attention of some others in our unit—which is probably the only reason Biggs faced any consequences at all.”
“But also the reason you got kicked out,” she said with a sigh.
He finally righted his head and his eyes found hers. “I deserved to get kicked out. I don’t regret what I did, but I should have stopped when I’d diffused the situation. I lost control. You can’t have the army full of guys who can’t control themselves.”
“Unlike Biggs,” she retorted. She didn’t know why she was arguing with him. It wasn’t like it was going to change anything. But it all seemed so unfair.
He shrugged. “Anyway, my sob story is not the point; it’s just the context. The point is, that incident was nothing compared to the last one—the one I told you about from my first tour, when the suicide bomber hit. The head shrinkers did their voodoo on me after that tour, and eventually, I was mostly fine. Yeah, the thing with Becky on this latest tour got my adrenaline going for a while there, but it was nothing like the previous incident. So what the hell is my problem now?” He gestured angrily at himself. “I’m at a wedding at a fucking lavender farm, and I’m totally losing my shit?”
“I’m no expert, but I’d say that the thing with Becky and Biggs was as traumatic as the suicide bombing. It may not have been as horrific in the moment, but it had huge personal consequences for you. It ruined your career.”
“I ruined my career,” he corrected.
She chose to ignore that claim. It wasn’t true, but she didn’t want to argue with him. “Anyway, I don’t think it works like that,” she said. “I mean, I’m not a doctor, but it’s probably not a linear thing, where a certain input leads to a certain output, you know? There’s probably some kind of complicated soup of memories and experiences in your head, and maybe this latest thing magnified your first experience, and then being out here kind of ignited the whole thing.”
He sighed and slung an arm around her, his whole body deflating. But it didn’t seem like a sad, defeated deflating, more like relief you get after the cessation of effort. “How did you get so wise, Jane Denning?”
She performed a comically exaggerated shrug, wanting more than anything to see him smile. “I read a lot of long-form magazine articles?”
It worked. He laughed out loud and pulled her tighter to him in a sideways half hug.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Be with me. Stay with me,” he said. “Remind me that I’m here, not there.”
Be with me. Stay with me.
She wanted to ask him what he meant, exactly, by that, but now was not the time.
She could do what he asked, though, as long as she took care to protect her heart. It would be hard to spend time with him, but she would have to be a monster to turn him away. “Hey! I have an idea!” She jumped to her feet and tugged him to stand beside her. “If we hurry, we might get back before Gia leaves, and we can take over her assignment!”
“And why would we want to do that?”
“Because then we can drive to the nearest town and buy a boatload of sunglasses. Can you imagine? Three hundred pairs of crappy sunglasses in the back of your Corvette? I bet that won’t remind you of the Middle East!”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“Then maybe we can figure out what the highest point in Prince Edward County is. There’s got to be some glorified hill around here somewhere.”
He smiled—and didn’t let go of her hand as they walked back.
* * *
Cameron shoved the plate of French fries toward Jane.
She shoved it back. “You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. My. Dress. Is. Not. Going. To. Zip. Up.”
Undaunted, he passed it back to her. “You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. You. Are. Hot. Exactly. The. Way. You. Are.” The pile of iceberg lettuce and carrot shavings that passed for a “salad” in the small-town diner they were in made him angry in principle. She had to have worked up an appetite, because in addition to hitting two Walmarts and three dollar stores, they had trekked up a hill in nearby Picton, from which they’d had a great view of Lake Ontario.
She cracked a smile. “I appreciate that. I really do. But listen to me. You can pin a dress that’s too big and make it look halfway decent. But you can’t do anything for a dress that’s too small. I’m not making a big antifeminist statement here. I mean, I’ve learned my lesson: I should have ordered the twelve. But if my dress doesn’t zip up on Saturday, not only is Elise’s head going to start spinning around a la the Exorcist, but I’m going to be humiliated.”
He pulled the fries back to his side of the booth, feeling the sharp sting of humiliation as if it were happening to him. God, he was an ass. He’d just wanted to please her. To do anything to make her happy. To lay the world at her feet, basically, even though it would never be sufficient to thank her for what she’d done for him today. So he settled for, “I’m sorry,” hoping she would hear the sincerity in his voice.
“It’s okay,” she said, halfheartedly spearing a piece of limp lettuce. “You can take me out for the biggest, greasiest plate of fries on Sunday.” Then she looked up, her eyes wide and borderline panicked. “I mean, not really. You’ll be on your way…somewhere, I’m sure. After the wedding, I mean.”
He hated how quickly she corrected herself, rushing to assure him that she had no expectations of him. But she had always been smart, his Jane. She knew the score.
He could fall for her. He had fallen for her, if he was being honest with himself. But damned if he was going to let her fall for him.
But he could certainly stick around long enough to buy her some post-wedding fries, so he said, “Sunday morning. Fries. It’s a date.”